If you own a business, chances are that you have a website to promote your products and services. But it is not enough just to have a website. One of the things that will make your website effective is how easy visitors can navigate around it.
If your website loads faster and users can easily access different pages with ease, then they are likely to come back. Research shows that more than 40 percent of visitors are turned off and never return to a website that takes longer to load.
The unfortunate part is a majority of developers and website owners don’t know the speed of their websites and how it affects their users.
It is important to carry out a speed test to understand the current speed of your website and if there is anything you need to do to improve that speed.
Below are 5 tips to improving website load speed:
(1) Conduct a quick free analysis of your website
One of the best ways of improving the load speed of a website is by carrying out a thorough analysis to determine the current loading speed. There are plenty of free tools online that you can use to perform a quick and thorough analysis. All you need to do is to input the URL of the page you would want to test and wait for the results.
After obtaining the results, you will have a clear idea of the load speed of your website. This will help you to understand what makes your website load slowly and what action to take to improve the speed.
(2) Optimize all images
The type and size of images used in a website can greatly affect the loading speed. That’s why you should ensure that all images are of the right size and format. Images that are oversized or in the wrong format can slow down the loading speed of your page.
Begin by cropping all images to appropriate sizes and decrease the color depth to a minimal level. You should also use JPEG as your first choice and PNEG as your second choice.
(3) Reduce the number of plugins
It is true that plugins such as Google Analytics can offer valuable insights. But the truth is that they can also be the cause of slow page load time. Tr5y as much as possible to reduce the number of plugins to improve website load speed.
(4) Cache your pages
By caching pages, you decrease the number of requests being directed towards your server hence increasing speed load time significantly. Besides, caching is great when it comes to scaling your website when traffic is high.
(5) Use fewer redirects
Reducing the number of redirects is important because it minimizes the number of steps needed in the loading process. Remember that every step added means extra time will be required for a user to reach his or her destined location.
There’s no doubt that website speed load plays a big role in increasing traffic to your website. Using platforms like Nexcess that offer managed wordpress hosting services and conduct regular speed tests are some of the best ways to improve load speed.
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